Commercial airlines will occasionally need to change the passenger seating arrangement in an airplane. This is often necessary in a response to a change in passenger mix or schedule changes. In order to make most efficient use of its fleet, an airline will want each airplane to include a proper ratio of first-class, business-class, and coach-class seats. Passenger mix, however, is highly variable and demand may vary even during different times of the day, day of the week, or from market to market. For example, the business person typically travels during the early morning and late afternoon. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon travel may be predominantly leisure travellers desiring the more economical, coach seats. On weekends, passengers may be almost all leisure travellers.
Seating conversion usually requires removing the existing seats and replacing them with new seats of a different size. Changing the seating in this manner requires considerable time, during which the aircraft must be put out of service U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,702, granted Nov. 21, 1989, to Richard J. Slettebak, provides a seat construction which permits a change in the seating configuration by making adjustments to a permanent seat structure. Specifically, this patent discloses seat assemblies which are convertible between seven seats in a row and six wider seats in the same row.
The above-mentioned U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 07/482,197 discloses a passenger seat construction which permits a change in seating between six seats in a row and five wider seats in the same row. Each row of seats is composed of two seat assemblies separated by an aisle. One of the assemblies is convertible between three seats of a first seat width and three seats of a wider seat width. The other assembly is convertible between three seats of a first seat width and two seats of a wider seat width.
The present invention relates primarily to improvements in the three-to-three seat assembly. However, some aspects of the present invention are usable in the three-to-two seat assembly, and in other seat assemblies composed of movable and fixed frame portions. A principal object of the present invention is to provide control mechanisms which automatically reposition the seat assembly components in response to a simple push or pull imposed on a movable aisle seat frame portion of the seat assembly.